A Tour of Halong Bay

Sunday, January 3 – There are so many tour companies operating 2day/1night tours of Halong bay that it’s intimidating. Travel brochures can make anything look nice, but how can you really tell if you’re buying a quality tour?

We visited a couple of the tour companies recommended in the Lonely planet guidebook, but in the end, we booked our tour through our hotel.

The clincher was our hotel salesperson. He was very helpful with outlining the various options they could provide, but he never pressured us to buy. And that made a huge difference. It at least made him seem an honest fellow.

In the end we were very happy with our tour company

The itinerary ran something like this:

• Get up and catch a bus at 8am to head to Halong Bay (About 3.5 hours East of Hanoi).
  
• Board the boat and check into our room
  
• Head out into the bay while we eat lunch.
  
• Stop at one of the 2000 islands and explore a ginormous cave
  
• Back to the boat and head to a small fishing village where we boarded some two-person kayaks to paddle around the bay. This turned out to be the highlight of the trip. We explored on our own for the better part of two hours, paddling through a limestone cave as well as discovering a quiet and secluded bay. We got to see all sorts of coral and marine life at the bases of these limestone pillars. And this was also one of the few times the sun came out, shining on the sails of the junk boats in the harbour. But we didn’t bring our camera on the kayak. :(
  
• Dinner and squid fishing on the boat (No, we didn’t catch any, but the captain did) followed by Karaoke and bed.
  
• Next day, up for breakfast, followed by a hike up to the top of one of the islands that had a great view of the bay.
  
• Back for a lunch and then grab a bus back into the city.
  

It sounds like a packed little adventure with little down time, but even though we were busy, we had some time to just relax and soak in the surroundings.

Our impression? Halong bay is beautiful, and certainly worth the visit and a night on the water, but as far as natural wonders go it falls a bit short. It could very well be because the weather was somewhat foggy and that we didn’t get an unobstructed view of the vastness of the bay, but it’s hard to put it up there with something like the Grand Canyon, which is just breathtaking.

Junkii took hundreds of photos of Halong Bay, and as always, you can check them out on his Flickr account – but here are a dozen or so of our favourite shots from the bay.